BY JONATHAN VALANIA Ann McElhinney and her husband Phelim McAleer describe themselves as journalists/documentary filmmakers whose only agenda is to tell the stories that aren’t being told: That environmentalists like Al Gore, James Cameron and Gasland director Josh Fox are (in order of appearance) liars, cheaters and hypocrites; that global warming/climate change is scam; that scientists who insist otherwise are only in it for the money; that fracking is harmless; and fossil fuel consumption is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I would call her a paid shill for Big Energy. Her latest film, Not Just Evil But Wrong, argues that decades […]
I WAS A TEENAGE SEX PISTOL: Q&A With Pistols Bassist & Principal Songwriter Glen Matlock
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Glen Matlock was the original bass player in the Sex Pistols, and he was also one the band’s principal songwriters — all the classic Pistols tunes (“Anarchy In The UK,” “God Save The Queen” “Pretty Vacant”) bear his imprimatur. So why haven’t you heard of him? Because he left the band — whether he quit or was fired depends on who you ask — just before the Pistols went supernova and was replaced by human car wreck Sid Vicious who’s onstage self-mutilation, epic dope appetite and ignominious demise (dead from a heroin overdose while being jailed for […]
Q&A With Scott McCaughey Of The Baseball Project
BY JONATHAN VALANIA The knock on rock music since, well, time immemorial is that there’s nothing new under The Big Rock Sun, that it’s all been done before and everything after is just a distant echo of the big bang that ended on or about 1969. The Baseball Project puts the lie to all that. I submit to you that they are doing something that’s never before: An indie rock supergroup that writes catchy songs about the lore and the legends of America’s pastime. If there is an ur-text for the Baseball Project, it’s “Take Me Out To The Ball […]
Q&A With Philly Homeboy Schoolly D, The Original OG
[Photo by Jonene Taddei] BY JONATHAN VALANIA Deep inside Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik’s 1,400 page ‘manifesto’, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” in between all the raging Islamophobia, pathological nativism, and bomb-making instructions, the man who killed 77 innocent, unarmed people in cold blood, warns readers of the negative effect that gangsta rap lyrics have on society. In section 2.67 of the PDF version, Breivik includes a slightly bastardized version of John P McWhorter’s 2003 anti-rap diatribe How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back, which singles out a few of the most sensational lines from West Philly native Schooly D’s proto-gangsta […]
FOLK FESTIVUS: Q&A With Jorma Kaukonen
Jorma Kaukonen, bottom left BY JONATHAN VALANIA Son of a Finnish American father and Russian Jewish mother, Jorma Koukonen spent his early child in the Phillipines and his teenage years in Washington D.C., where he learned to play guitar. He played in an early rock ‘ roll band called the Triumphs in the late 50s, before being seduced by the finger-style acoustic blues playing of Reverend Gary Davis whilst attending Antioch college. In 1962 he moved to the Bay Area to attend Santa Clara University, where his roommate was one Paul Kantner. During this time he struck up a friendship […]
Q&A With The Regulars Photographer Sarah Stolfa
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Pretty much everyone in this town knows about The Regulars, Sarah Stolfa’s stunning Bukowski-meets-Caravaggio portraiture of McGlinchey’s patrons, snapped from behind the bar where she earned the dubious distinction of Unfriendliest Bartender In Town. The series won her first place in the New York Times Sunday Magazine’s Photography Contest For College Students, a long-running exhibition at Gallery 339 and an asspocket full of local acclaim and national recognition, including a residency at the Whitney Museum Of American Art in New York. And now Artisan Books has published the series in richly-appointed book form with a snarky-but-snappy essay […]
BOOKS: Q&A Wth Annie Jacobsen, Author Of Area 51
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Annie Jacobsen writes about national security for the Los Angeles Times’ Sunday Magazine. Recently, she published a fascinating and expansive history of Area 51, which is sort of the Land Of Oz for conspiracy theorists, UFOologists and national security buffs alike. According to Jacobsen, it is also the incubator and proving ground for most if not all of the gee-whiz top secret surveillance hardware, aircraft and weaponry deployed by the national security state and ground zero for more than 100 above and below ground nuclear bomb tests. But it is the final chapter of the book that […]
‘I ALMOST DIED A HUNDRED TIMES’: Q&A With Marwan Riyadh, Drummer For Acrassicauda
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Baghdad metallurgists ACRASSICAUDA have survived Saddam’s thugs, al Qaeda goon squads and assorted jihadist jerks — all of whom tried to silence them, under threat of death or imprisonment — but can they survive Fish Town? Find out tonight when they rock Johnny Brendas, along with all-girl Metallica tribute band Misstallica. On the eve of a U.S. tour, we got Acrassicauda drummer Marwan Riyadh on the line to talk about life in a war zone when you’re young, Iraqi and just wanna rock the fuck out — which is easier said than done, because if American bombs […]
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A MIDDLE-AGED MAN: A Q&A With Dan Clowes, Cartoonist Extraordinaire
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Daniel Clowes’ 30-plus-year career as a cartoonist/graphic novelist/screenwriter has seen some remarkable reversals of fortune. Back in the mid-80s, when Clowes was fresh out of Pratt and looking to take the graphic design/illustration world by storm, he couldn’t get art directors to return his phone calls. These days, post-Ghost World, the New Yorker and The New York Times plead with him to return their calls. When not busy cranking out darkly hilarious comic works like Eightball, Dan Pussey and David Boring, or illustrating Ramones videos and Supersuckers album covers, or working with Coke to create the infamous […]
For All The F*cked Up Children Of This World, We Give You A Q&A With Sonic Boom/Peter Kember
BY JONATHAN VALANIA In the beginning, before there was Spiritualized or Spectrum, there was Spacemen 3. If you came of age in 80s, in the dreary grey flannel age of Reagan/Thatcher, when drug war hysteria was reaching a feverish pitch, Spacemen 3 was hands down the most persuasive and rewarding argument for the ingestion of mind-expanding substances since Pink met Floyd. In August of 1984, Jason Pierce (a.k.a. Jason Spaceman) received a government grant to attend Rugby Art College — which he promptly misused to purchase an electric guitar and amplifier. It was at Rugby Art College that Pierce […]
Q&A: With Hampton Sides Author Of Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the International Hunt for His Assassin
Hampton Sides is an acclaimed bestselling author and a National Magazine Award nominated journalist. He won the PEN USA Award for nonfiction and the 2002 Discover Award from Barnes and Noble for Ghost Soldiers, a historical narrative following the rescue of WWII Bataan Death March survivors that was later adapted into the Miramax feature film The Great Raid. His next book, Blood and Thunder, was adapted into an episode of the Public Broadcasting Service’s American Experience series. Hellhound On His Trail, is a taut and thrilling account of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the 65-day manhunt for […]
RAWK TAWK: Q&A With Smithereens Drum Major & Pop Historian Extraordinaire Dennis Diken
BY JONATHAN VALANIA For going on 35 years, Dennis Diken has been pounding the skins for The Smithereens, arguably one of the finest bar bands to crawl out of the teenage jungleland of nowhere New Jersey. All the Smithereens’ best songs carried a hint of desperation: the unspoken understanding that these Jersey sons were always one bar gig away from the factory grind that claimed the hope of their fathers. They were literally playing rock ‘n’ roll as if their lives depended on it. The new Smithereens 2011 finds the band in fine form all these years later, still bashing […]
RAWK TAWK: Q&A With Robyn Hitchcock
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Joe Boyd is a most intriguing fellow to rock snobs or anyone with a working knowledge of the cultural history of the latter half of the 20th century. An American ex-pat (south Jersey represent!) living in Britain most of his life, Boyd not only had a front row seat for some of the most important albums, bands and events of the psychedelic 60s — events that would, in many ways, define rock history moving forward — he was often their chief enabler. Boyd produced “Arnold Layne,” Pink Floyd’s first single, along with albums by Nick Drake, Fairport […]